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I think one of the few things that Trek has gotten consistently and traditionally right is that ship-board energy weapons have observable travel times. It's the scale of the ships that's off. At the relativistic distances at which starships encounter each other, a beam's travel time would be short but observable. Keep in mind that one light-second is only 186,000 miles, give-or-take — that's only about 5/6 the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Cosmologically speaking, any two starships seen together on screen would basically have to occupy the same space in order to see comparative sizes we see on screen.

I loved the Kelvin's weaponry. The Enterprise's phaser bolts ... not so much. I always liked the visual mix of torpedoes and beams. I think having short bursts and continuous beams in the same sequence would be pretty cool. Maybe analogous to a shotgun and a sniper rifle?

I too hate the pew pew spit balls but there was something tired about the beams too. If they and the torpedoes make no impact when they hit, who cares? Phasers used to be dread-inducing mega-weapons...now they're meh. The first spacecraft the U.S. launches with nukes could obliterate most Trek starships, given how badly they react to the far weaker energy weapons we see these days.